An ontology is a semantically structured controlled vocabulary. Currently, ontologies of molecular biological interest are oriented toward the research community. These ontologies focus primarily on functional attributes of molecular entities and do not meet the requirements for use in the clinical community, such as healthcare organizations, hospitals, physician's offices and clinical healthcare laboratories. The research ontologies do not represent the molecular entities targeted by the tests currently performed in clinical diagnostics in a standardized and machine readable format.
Furthermore, designing and implementing a computerized medical records system is a lengthy and complex process that is currently performed manually. Currently, a database administrator must manually determine the proper individual molecular diagnostic tests to be associated with an orderable procedure. A system and method for automatically proposing molecular diagnostic test components to be associated with an orderable procedure would also be beneficial.